Our children have a much better chance of succeeding in school if we, as parents, support them in their learning at home. You want to support your child in their learning and personal development. So, are you looking for effective and engaging learning methods that will help you support your child in their studies? You’ve come to the right place. For you, we have gathered together some of the most exciting learning methods that you should use to give your child a boost in their studies and support them on the path to academic and professional success.
What is a learning method?
At its core, a learning method is a way of supporting learning, designed to meet the individual needs of learners, like your child.
There are many different learning methods and approaches, including visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning. We will explore them in the rest of this article.
Ultimately, the most effective method for your child will depend on his or her individual needs.
The key to helping your child succeed in school is to be flexible and adaptable and be willing to try different approaches until you find what works best for your child.
By using the right learning methods, you can support your child in reaching their full potential, impacting not only their studies but their life as a whole.
Top 9 Learning Methods to Help Your Child
Here are the best learning methods you should try at home.
1. Visual learning
Sometimes your kids are tired of boring note-taking at school. That’s where visual aids come in.
Visual learning is the use of pictures, graphs, and other visual aids to help students learn better.
It’s about showing rather than just telling. Visuals make abstract concepts easier to understand.
Visual learning is fantastic because it dramatically improves retention.
At home, use maps, pictures, diagrams, and even videos to make learning fun for your youngster.
2. Active and practical learning
Your little girl may be fascinated by technology, but you’ll probably never know it. Unless you let her play with little tech toys and even get her hands dirty.
My son recently wrecked a toy car I bought him. To his surprise, I didn’t replace it.
He worried about it for a while, then he figured out a way to fix it himself. It was a small disconnection of wires. I came home and noticed the car was working again.
He learned the most important lesson. Now we can sit down and talk about wires and even all the physics involved.
This is active learning. This is learning by doing. Enough of lectures 24 hours a day!
Take your child to the lab, the kitchen, the garage, the workshop, or anywhere else. As long as he can learn….
According to the famous learning pyramid, active learning is the best form of learning today. You can learn more about Edgar Dale’s learning pyramid and how to use it to support your child’s academic success.
3. Kinesthetic learning
Kinesthetic learning is learning by doing movements. Note that we haven’t talked about ju-jitsu. Kinesthetic learners learn by doing, not by listening or reading like they do in school.
Kinesthetic learning is a form of active learning where our children learn by getting their hands dirty.
So instead of showing your son a video of a science experiment, you take him to a local lab to play with baking soda. “Cool, right?”
Instead of showing your daughter a picture of a diesel engine, you can take her to the garage. Yes, to the garage!
But seeing won’t be enough, she’ll have to turn a few screws and touch a little oil or grease (if she wants to). That’s what kinesthetic learning is all about.
4. The Repetition
Repetition is an effective learning method that involves repeating a skill or task until it becomes second nature.
Good old repetition never fails. Remember those little punishments where you were asked to repeat a certain task a certain number of times? I bet you learned a lot from those repetitions.
If your child is having trouble mastering a concept or skill, you can offer him an exercise that he can repeat ten times.
I guarantee you that this child will master the skill in question better than anything else. Repetition works, and we as parents need to use it often.
A good example is these writing exercises that ask children to write the same thing on an entire page. It’s good for mastery. It’s good for learning.
5. Inquiry-based learning
There are so many things happening in the world today that are worth our children discovering and experiencing.
Did you know that curiosity-based learning is a very stimulating and effective learning method to apply at home?
Yes. You just need to find triggers that get children thinking and asking questions.
The basic idea of this approach is to teach students “how to think,” rather than “what to think”; by guiding their thinking process through exploration and high-level questioning.
This method promotes better understanding and retention; and helps your child develop skills such as:
- Critical thinking (analytical mind),
- Creativity (innovative spirit) and
- Collaboration (Ask for help) …
And here are 3 skills that are essential in the professional world.
Some examples of investigation, for you at home
- For example, ask your son what he thinks about a historical event: The exploits of Abraham Lincoln. Listen to what he has to say.
- Take the battery out of a device and ask him why the thing stopped working. Now you can teach him about energy concepts.
Here’s another one:
- Put salt in water, heat it until it boils, and then watch your daughter marvel as the salt crystallizes again. Ask her what she thinks. Let her share her ideas, before you maybe start explaining the separation of mixtures and all that boring chemistry stuff.
6. Technology-based learning
Back then we had libraries; today our children have the Internet and a multitude of online resources. In small devices, much richer than all those libraries we frequented.
According to Richard Clark, “Technology-based learning can be highly engaging and effective, especially for students who are comfortable with digital devices and platforms.”
Trying to teach your child to read? Find reading exercises online. Use an app like Duolingo to help with language.
Want to teach him how to code? No stress, use an interactive learning platform like Sololearn. There are so many resources at your disposal.
With technology, your child can never be bored when learning.
We have a comprehensive guide on how we, as parents, can use social media effectively to enhance our children’s learning at home.
7. Project-based learning
This is my favorite learning method: learning with projects.
Project-based learning can require a bit of teamwork. If you have a lot of kids, this is perfect.
But if not, you can also find individual projects to accelerate your child’s learning.
Here are some home projects you can give your child:
- Ask him to do some research and bake a cake.
- In the software field, ask your daughter to create a small website to share family photos.
- Have your boy do his research and make homemade soap.
You will be amazed at how quickly your children can learn with slightly challenging projects. You can help them but don’t overdo it. Let them think, research, make an effort, and be rewarded.
Don’t forget the reward!
It’s the best way to learn.
8. Learning through play
A cool game, but it teaches us math faster than our teachers. For real.
Learning through play is amazing, but most schools don’t use it. One might wonder why. Anyway, that’s another debate….
At home, you can find very interesting educational games to help your children learn faster while having fun.
Nothing is more enjoyable than learning to read, but playing a fun game.
For example, you can use code combat to teach your child programming, a Prodigy game can improve math skills, and Kahoot to test general knowledge, and many more.
At Move to Top, we strongly believe in learning through play, so much so that we have developed our educational games on our online platform, for children. These games work wonders in helping our students learn better, faster, and while having fun.
To learn more about our program, click here.
9. Self-directed learning
Self-directed learning is a method of learning that places the responsibility for learning on the learner (your child).
This means that the child takes charge of his or her learning process, setting goals, identifying resources, and monitoring progress.
This method of learning is particularly effective for children who learn independently, or who like to work at their own pace.
One of the main benefits of self-directed learning is that it gives your child control over their learning journey, which is empowering and builds a sense of ownership.
The child learns a range of skills including time management, problem-solving, critical thinking, and self-reflection.
And these talents are very useful, whether at work or in other spheres of life. And they can make the difference between a leadership career, rich, enjoyable… and others.
Entrepreneurs, and leaders… often use self-directed learning to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to launch and develop their ideas or carry out their causes.
Busy parent? I understand that it can be difficult to fully commit to your child’s education.
So, I offer you our personalized academic coaching program, through which we help young people reach their full potential for success in their studies and life.
Learn more about our school coaching program here.
Conclusion
Every parent wants to have the means to ensure the proper academic and personal development of their child. Unfortunately, we do not always know how to support our children in their learning.
In this article, we have shared with you 9 brilliant learning methods that you can use today, to help your child in their learning and even skyrocket their results.
By incorporating these methods into your child’s daily routine, you can help keep them engaged, motivated, and excited about learning.
With these learning methods, not only will you help your child enjoy learning, but you will also establish a strong bond with them that will truly push them to succeed.